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Is Rebel Wilson Lying About Her Age?

Pitch Perfect 2 actress Rebel Wilson has found herself at the centre of tabloid headlines over speculation that she has been lying about her age. Various sources are reporting Wilson is not in fact 29-years-old as she says, but that the actress is 36-years-old. Woman’s Day, an Australian weekly magazine, claims in an article online entitled, ‘Separating fact from fiction: will the real Rebel Wilson please stand up!’ that Rebel has been stretching the truth ever since she launched her career in the United States.

Woman’s Day has spoken to an old classmate of the Bridesmaids actress who says that Rebel has been exaggerating many aspects of her life in interviews, dismissing any outlandish stories as ‘fantasy’. This source says that Rebel didn’t lead that wild a life before becoming a beloved Hollywood star. In interviews Rebel has spoken about living in Mozambique for some time, where she caught malaria and hallucinated about winning an Oscar and accepting the statuette via rapping. This maybe-bitter classmate says that Rebel’s unbringing was a little bit more staid than that saying it was, “very normal, upper-middle-class”, and that Rebel has also lied about her age and changed her name.

“I studied with Rebel at Tara Anglican School for Girls in North Parramatta, Sydney. But no-one knew of a Rebel Wilson. Her name is – or was – Melanie Elizabeth Bownds, and she’s 36 – she was born in 1979 and we left school in 1997,” said the source. Rebel’s alleged classmate shared a yearbook photo dated from 1992 and then went on to say no one thought the Fat Amy star was funny in school.

A bit unnecessarily catty, no?

Rebel took to Twitter to clarify the story in the best kind of way.

OMG I’m actually a 100 year old mermaid formerly known as “CC Chalice” ….thanks shady Australian press for your tall poppy syndrome x

Is this a silly tabloid frenzy? We think so. Hollywood actors have been bending the truth ever since cameras started rolling in the Hollywood hills. Relationships were hidden in case fans reacted badly to their matinee idols being married, or in the case of Rock Hudson, gay. Merle Oberon, one of the biggest actresses of the 1930s, was constantly on the defense about her Indian heritage. And Cary Grant’s real-life origins are that of Archibald Leach, a circus performer.

If Rebel Wilson felt that shaving a few years off her passport helped her career, then let her at it. It’s not often plus-size actresses are the biggest draw in movies, and Wilson’s role in Pitch Perfect and its record-breaking sequel are far more exciting than any age ‘scandal’.